Well, it is official. I won’t be a Pastry Chef. It will only be a dream. Whoa! What’s that got to do with the title of this post? Well, please bear with me and let me rattle the cage here.

I don’t have the personality or the physical ability to put in 12 or more hour days on my feet. My back occasionally goes out on its own, so that doesn’t help either. I don’t possess the organizational skills; my house is mostly in shambles (bless my Hubby for putting up with me). Although I am painfully meticulous with the minutiae, I often skip steps and end up forgetting a couple of ingredients or steps. I need a minimum of eight hours of beauty sleep, since if I don’t get enough sleep, I will become incoherent and plainly irritating to be around. And, the most important thing is creativity. I have no creativity at all. As I can attest from the recipes that I have collected here, I don’t create my own – never have, and probably never will. I just don’t have that “knack” to combine things at the spur of the moment and whip up something edible and that tastes good. Lastly, the train has left the station, according to Anthony Bourdain, as I am approaching the 19th anniversary of my 21st birthday. (I heard things start to go downhill from there, is that true?).

Such a conundrum right? So I will just be content doing my own thing on the weekend, fattening up my family and co-workers. Oh, and if you want to read what caused me to ramble, feel free to read the piece by The Reluctant Gourmet and AB’s piece (this one contains mature, adult and vulgar wording, so read at your own caution. Mature, adult and vulgar wording in the Pastry world? What could that be? Oh, let me quit before I am completely off track here). Not that I completely agree with AB, for if you are determined to be where you want to be, I’m sure you will arrive there one day. That’s just my opinion.

Okay, now what’s that got to do with the Seasoned Bread Crumbs? Ha ha…. Nothing really, other than I needed an outlet for my gibberish talk. Sometimes I feel sorry for my few readers, since you’re at my mercy. Of course, you can always click away and move on to something else. Anyway, I was looking for the recipes that guided me to make this super simple stuff and I just couldn’t believe I didn’t email the links to myself. See how disorganized I am? I needed some baking guidance since I know I need to toast/bake the bread first. Dried bread is just not enough – I found out that even if a bread looks dry, the inside stills hold on to moisture.

You might ask why do I bother to make bread crumbs when you can easily buy them from the grocery store? Well, it was because I had leftover bread. I would either make it right away, or just throw it into the freezer until such time that I am bothered to make the bread crumbs. Occasionally, I would make it into croutons too. Or sometimes I bring the old bread to work to feed to the ducks at the city park. But that’s another story for another time.

So basically I just need to have old, stale bread and seasoning. As far as seasoning, it would go as far as I would want them. This time, since I have a jar of Italian seasoning that I rarely use, I chose this seasoning. Then, I also grabbed onion powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper.

I arranged the sliced bread onto a baking pan and baked it at 400F for 10 – 12 minutes. This site is where I got the information for the temperature and the length on toasting the bread.

In the meantime, I just poured the seasoning into a small ramekin, combining all of them. I didn’t have a specific measurement, I just eyeballed it.

When the bread was finished toasting, I got this almost too-browned bread. So I need to watch out and not just leave them bake on their own.

Then I put the toasted bread into the food processor.

Turned it on until I had these crumbs.

Then I added the seasonings…

Pulsed the food processor…

And voila! Seasoned bread crumbs! Super easy right? ? So next time when you have old bread laying around, don’t throw it away. Make croutons or bread crumbs!

Directions
If using fresh baguette, place slices on a cookie sheet in a preheated 400 degree Fahrenheit oven for about 10-12 minutes. Let cool slightly and cut into cubes.
Place cubes of stale or toasted baguette in a blender or food processor.
Add herbs, salt and pepper and process for 15-20 seconds, or until the mixture is ground into fine crumbs.
Store in airtight container and in the freezer.

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2 Responses to Seasoned Bread Crumbs

Girl, we both will be celebrating our 19th anniversary of our 21st birthday soon! Mine’s in July 🙂 Everytime I read your posts you sound more and more like me. I found a site to help me get more organized and get my house out of chaos. I know it sounds like an advertisement, but I swear it’s not. It’s free and it has worked for me. Check out flylady.net. Let me know what you think!

Oh goodness Chris! Mine will be in May! I think there is something about being born the same year and being born within a few months from each other! I’m pretty close with my ex-coworker of mine that was born in July 🙂
I’ve heard of the flylady.net. I think I even tried it… If I remember correctly, she wants you to clean up the sink first. Nothing else. (I did that), and then… I forgot to follow up.. ha ha… And I seem can’t ever to remember to remove one junk item once a day. Today I did a lot of shredding.. so I felt like something at least is being removed from the vicinity of the house… 😀 I think my problem is memory! I could never remember stuff!!

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